"For the next forty minutes or so I will be discussing the economic, the social, and the political conditions of the last half of the fourteenth century in England, Chaucer's place in this world, and the relation of this to Chaucer's poetry. I will be offering, in other words, what is known in literary criticism as an historicist account. "

This lengthy analysis of the author's life and work includes sections on "ChaucerŐs Life", "Troilus and Criseyde", "The Canterbury Tales ", "ChaucerŐs Learning", "His Humour ", and "His Poetical Quality ."

Contains: Extensive Bio, Criticism, Bibliography

Author: George Saintsbury

From:The Cambridge History of English and American Literature Volume II: English, The End of the Middle Ages

"This book begins to deal with the analogy by mapping Dante's reaction to money in the Commedia. My method is cross- disciplinary and from time to time uses history, economics, sociology, philology, and literary criticism. Dante's reaction to money, the map makes clear, leads to thestructure from which his poem comprehends imagery and the operation of poetic discourse. This map I next follow to Chaucer. Chaucer, I argue, is no mere quoter of virtuoso passages. Rather, he is a great interpreter of Dante. He is so, in part, because of his own efforts to come to grips through poetry with the power and the meaning of money."

This excellent webliography brings together an annotated list of the best online sources of information on Chaucer's life and works. Includes background materials, biography, bibliography, commentary, images, and language, as well as general links. A particularly good starting point for any Internet research on the author.

"I will show the way a single, powerful aspect of the RenaissanceChaucer transformed the first book of one of the most canonical poems in English literature, The Faerie Queene. Demonstrating how The Plowman's Tale transformed Spenser's work in Book One is important for us because an understanding of the Tale's impact makes us re-examine our views of Edmund Spenser himself, showing him to be a poet concerned with the cultural construction of the English nation."

"Geoffrey Chaucer led a busy official life, as an esquire of the royal court, as the comptroller of the customs for the port of London, as a participant in important diplomatic missions, and in a variety of other official duties."